I narrowed my eyes at the guy. “If you’re an illusionist, then…” I gestured up at his hands, “This would be easy.”
His bright emerald eyes fixed on mine. And suddenly, I heard his voice filling my thoughts. This can’t be faked. External voices, yes, but not internal ones.
I pushed my palms into my temples. “Don’t ever go into my head. Are you reading my mind?”
“No.” He shook his head. “I can only ever read the surface thoughts, and only if I use all of my attention. I can’t do it while I walk or talk. This whole thing isn’t about who’s playing what role in the rebellion, Kori. This is about stopping the vampires from massacring the people hiding under the city. That’s what you want, right?” I couldn’t argue with his words but taking on this role felt so wrong. It would start with a small job like this, but what would it end with? In my heart, I knew.
I shook my head. “I’ll never be an assassin or a spy for the rebellion. I’m a battle strategist.”
“A failed battle strategist. And, this isn’t spying or assassinating anyone. This is charming, a king and saving thousands of lives. I’m guessing that’s in your skillset.” The fire in the Sorcerer’s hand extinguished, and the dust streamed out of his fingers. He crossed his arms over his chest. “Look, either you follow General Griff’s orders, or you don’t. I’m just a messenger, and I need to return to the army.” Reaching up, he snapped his fingers and vanished.
I knew he was still here, but clearly, the meeting was over.
A writhing feeling started in my stomach, and I covered it with my arm. Why was I so resistant to following Griff’s plan? He was right. Whether or not Nightendale’s armies would massacre the remaining humans, if the kings got that alliance, the rebellion would be over. Griff would have to surrender with those odds.
I was likely the only person who could be in the right place at the right time to derail the alliance. It made so much sense and yet felt so wrong inside of me.
Was it just that I was resistant to betraying the three kings, or was it that the thought of seeing King Ravage again terrified me to the depths of my soul?
I didn’t know. While all paths forward felt wrong, abandoning the rebels to die or be subjugated would be the choice I couldn’t live with.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
KORI
Instead of taking the former king’s rooms, Ruin, Ash, and Death took a set of apartments at the top level of the palace. From what I could tell, the penthouse was made up of three adjoining units with all but their load-bearing walls removed. Along one wall was an unobstructed view of Portland.
The streets below glowed red while the dome above glowed blue, but both lights were so diffuse, it was almost impossible to see any of it.
I curled up on a plush leather couch, grabbing my legs and staring at the city that I both loved and hated at this moment.
After four more days of wandering the halls with my siblings and charming the kings at the frivolous parties with the vampires, I was about ready to tear my own skin off. The apartments had not one, but three rooms that I could call my own. Once again, gowns, jewels, and gems overflowed from my closets and dressers.
A rustling came from deeper in the apartment, and I sat up straight, looking over the plush couch back. A massive figure snuck through the apartment. He wore the uniform of a palace soldier, black cargo pants, heavy boots, and a tight black t-shirt. He clutched what looked like a club in one hand. I was just starting to feel afraid when I got a glimpse of the man’s face.
“Reliving the glory days?” I called over.
Ash spun, and his eyes widened. His lips twisted, and he rubbed his blonde curly hair. I could see his cheeks darkening, so I added, “Sorry. I was just teasing you. I definitely have no complaints from here about you reliving the glory days.”
That was the god’s honest truth. His muscles bulged from his sleeves, and I could clearly see his thighs through the material of his pants.
He opened up his arms, showing that what I had mistaken for a club was actually a bottle of spirits, and he smirked. “You want me to twirl around for you.”
“Yes,” I said automatically, even though I knew that the question was meant snidely.
He lifted his brows and turned slowly once, and I had to say that his leg muscles in his pants were nothing compared to his perfect, firm ass.
“Wow,” I whispered when he’d fully turned back to me, “I could watch you do that all day.”
His smile warmed a little. “What are you doing? Can’t sleep?”
“Oh, I can sleep. It’s the dreams that are my problem.” I stood from the couch and padded across the wooden floor in bare feet.
Ash’s eyes immediately dipped lower, sliding over the silk robe I wore. It covered me more than a lot of my dresses but having Ash’s eyes on me while I wore a negligee felt very intimate.
“Do you want me to turn around?” I asked with a smile as I stopped before him. Not waiting for him to answer, I spun and then gave him a grin.
“So, what’s your excuse?” I gestured up the length of his body.
He rubbed the back of his neck. “Being honest? I’m just tired as fuck of fake interactions and people lying to my face. I needed a little vacation, and by that, I mean to the basement where my friends are taking their break between shifts.”
“Oh.” I nodded. “When you said vacation, I thought you meant out of Portland.” I tried to make the comment as offhanded as possible. The kings hadn’t mentioned the trip to Nightendale, and I was terrified that one day, they would just be gone, and I’d lose my chance.
He rolled his lower lip into his mouth and shook his head. “Good night, then,” he said as he turned for the door. When he was nearly there, he paused, his hand reaching for the doorknob. He looked back, and his umber eyes met mine. “You want to come meet them?”
I reeled back a little. “You want to introduce me to your warrior friends?”
He shook his head. “You’re not supposed to.”
“You forget, I’m a rebel,” I said as I turned on my heel.
“I’m not sure you should be reminding me of that,” he said dryly.
My least pretentious outfit was a short black dress and high heeled boots. And, as I walked out of bedroom number two, Ash’s jaw fell open.
“Would it be a lot to ask for you guys to give me some jeans and sneakers?”
“We were a little hopeless on what to get you, so we requested everything a consort would need from the head courtesan. You can definitely put an order in next time we send out for a shipment from Seattle.” His eyes narrowed in on my hemline. “Isn’t that outfit a little dangerous if you never wear underwear?”
“Someone has a loud mouth.” I was going to bite Ruin the next time I saw him.
Ash smirked. “This surprises you?”
“How much did he say, exactly?”
His smirk only grew. “Not much.”
For some reason, this didn’t bother me as much as it should have. I knew that patrons talked amongst themselves in the requests I had in bed. But, having these three men talking about me didn’t really feel like that. It felt almost sexy to think that both Death and Ash might be imagining themselves in that position.
Ash’s eyes were still locked on my hemline.
I put a hand on his arm, feeling the muscle there. “I promise you, Ash, I only show my…” I paused, “What’s a warrior word for…” I covered my mound, “This.”
His gaze met mine. “Pussy.”
Wow. I really liked that word. I liked it so much that desire pulsed between my thighs. Pussy was now officially added to my collection of dirty sex words.
“I promise you that I only show my pussy when I want to.”
He continued to smirk and rub the back of his neck, but a moment later, he gestured to the door. “After you.”
I quickly learned that what vampire warriors liked to do in their off time was play cards and drink whiskey underground. Ash sat with two other warrior
s in a low-lit room, all of them holding up twelve cards. I sat in the fourth chair, just listening to the guards’ banter.
“Want us to deal you in for our next hand of Queen’s Court, Koribella?” The one who’d introduced himself as Michael asked with a smile. I had a feeling that Michael was this vampire’s human name instead of the one his maker gave him on his rebirth, and I wondered if warriors did that often. I’d never heard a vampire royal use their human name.
“Please call me Kori. I didn’t bring anything to throw into the pot, though.”
“Doesn’t matter, we only take riches from the royals.” He winked and nodded to Ash. “We’ll play this round for fun. If we’re using nicknames, you can call me Shark, and he’s Shank,” he said, as he dealt twelve cards to me.
I picked up my hand and smiled at the pair. “Shark and Shank, now I’ll never be able to tell you two apart.”
They laughed because it was an obvious joke. Even in the dim light, the two couldn’t be more dissimilar. Shark was extremely burly, with clear cut muscles and prominent, square features. He had almost no hair at all on his head but had a long, red beard that braided down from his chin with beads and jewels embedded in.
Shark’s companion Shank had a lean, compact physique. Long lengths of deep purple hair wrapped up onto his head. He had delicate features, and above his eyes, he wore a light layer of iridescent purple paint.
“Do you know how to play?” Shark asked in his booming voice. “We could explain it to you.”
“No worries.” I shook my head. “I watched you guys play the last few rounds, so I’ll just figure it out as I go along. How many decks are there in play?”
“Three decks, only face cards,” he said with a wink.
“So, Ash, when are we heading to Nightendale?” Shank asked in a rich, smooth voice as he picked up a jack from the pile. He laid down four queens on the discard and grinned at me, his pearly white teeth glinting in the crimson light.
“I promise I’ll tell you as soon as I know,” Ash said. He wasn’t looking at me, but his leg pressed up the length of mine under the table.
Shark rubbed up and down his beard, picked a card, and then looked over at Ash. “I heard a rumor the other day that King Ravage was elevated from a warrior as well. That’s probably a good sign, as he’s also said to be the longest ruling vampire monarch in the world aside from the Queen of the Deep. I’ve always said it, and you guys are proving me right, just because you spent more years as a vampire, doesn’t make you any better at being one.”
“There’s some casual treason for you, Kori,” Shank said with amusement lacing his tone.”
“Careful.” I laid down two queens. “I’ll probably report you to the king.” My words had the desired effect of making the men chuckle, but a queasy nervousness sloshed back and forth in my stomach at the sound of King Ravage’s name. Turning toward Ash, I tried to keep my voice steady as I asked, “You’re going to Nightendale, Ash?”
“Not me,” he muttered as he took several cards from the discard.
“Kings,” Shank said as he laid down a pair. His head came up, and he grinned over at me. “We’re escorting Death there.”
“I didn’t know that.” I picked up two of his queens and laid down all four of mine. “I’ve never left Portland. Is it beautiful?”
Shark scratched his beard. “None of us have ever been there before to know whether it’s beautiful, am I right? King Ravage doesn’t let anyone into his kingdom. The only reason we know vampires live there at all is because envoys and trade goods come in and out of it. This is the first time King Ravage has invited--”
“Let’s talk about something else,” Ash said as he shuffled his cards in his hand.
Shark looked down to the card I just discarded and raised one auburn brow. “Oh, we have eleven queens in the discard. That’s quite the risky move, Kori. Anyone else draws a queen, they’ll instantly win. It’s your first time playing, do you want to take it back?”
“No. I’ll live with my choices,” I said with a wince. “I hope I’m not messing up your game.”
Shank snorted out a soft laugh and waved his hand at the table. “This is all for fun. It doesn’t matter.”
Absently, we played several more hands as the men engaged me in conversations that they probably thought I cared about like parties and fashion in Seattle, but my mind kept wandering back to King Ravage and his strange, reclusive kingdom.
When I finally picked up the ace I’d been waiting for, I laid down the other eleven that I’d already collected in my hand and discarded a king into the discard. “I conquered the castle with aces.”
Both of the warriors stared at me before glancing at Ash.
Ash didn’t seem surprised.
Shark leaned in to look at my cards as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. “How in the hell did you plan that?”
I bit my lip and turned over the deck to reveal the queen on the bottom. “Well, I watched your last game, and then I watched Shark shuffle and you cut, Shank. The rest I figured out from the order of the cards played and received. Queen’s Court is pretty straightforward.”
Shark burst out with a high-pitched laugh, earning a laugh from all of us. “And everyone calls me Shark. Do you want a new nickname? I think I have to lay mine down to you in defeat.”
Ash finished his whiskey and set his tumbler down. “Don’t let her outfit fool you. Kori was a high-ranking officer in the rebel army.”
Instead of being shocked or angry, they both slouched down and shook their heads like we’d played a good-natured prank on them.
“And you let me go on and on about dresses and parties—which, I, by the way, know fuck-all about,” Shark said through a laugh.
“It’s not my fault you made assumptions,” Ash said as he gathered the cards from the table into a pile and shuffled them.
“Well,” Shark leaned in. “If you don’t mind, I’d love to pick your brain about how you managed to rob my company and me of all of our supplies without us even seeing you.”
“You were part of the army?” I asked, suddenly feeling a little colder to the jolly warrior.
“Squadron leader in charge of supply trains from Portland. Non-combat,” he said. “We turned around, and the supplies were gone. It took us hours of searching up and down the tunnel to realize that you hadn’t even used the caves.” In his expression, I saw only amusement.
“This could take all night,” Ash said with a laugh, and I’m about ready to turn in. “You ready to leave, Kori?”
“Um, sure,” I said, standing carefully.
“Well, you had to do that, then.” Shark looked back to me, grinning. “You don’t need to tell me, but I’ll admit, I have spent many sleepless nights pondering how all of our supplies vanished into thin air.”
I considered the wisdom of telling this soldier before realizing that as we lost most of the provisions and almost lost several rebels, I would never use that same technique twice. “There’s a river there—underground. The way the caves are shaped there, you can’t hear it until you’re a cavern over. ”
“Well, damn.” He nodded in what I was pretty sure was thanks.
Shank grinned at me, showing a hint of his fangs. “I hope your card skills make you the richest person in Portland. It was lovely to meet you.”
When I stood, Ash grinned. “Don’t worry about that, Shank. She’s already the richest human in Portland.”
My calves burned by the time we made it up the ten flights of stairs. There were elevators in the palace, but with the low electricity, it often took thirty minutes to get up that many stories. By the time we made it in, the dome light above looked decidedly purple out the windows.
“It’ll be morning soon,” I said while unzipping my boots and laying them by the door. When I was back on the ground, Ash was suddenly an additional five inches taller than me, and I arched my neck to look up at him. “Are you going to bed?”
“Are you?” he asked.
I reach
ed forward and offered him my hand. His warm fingers wrapped around mine.
“Okay… the bedroom system is really confusing me. Where are we supposed to go?”
His eyes heated, but his expression was hard to read. “Everything that Death plans is precisely practical and yet needlessly complicated. According to his system, the bedroom on the far right is a space none of us can enter or bother you in. The bedroom in the middle is for you to have your own space you’re in control in, but you can bring us into it if you want. The bedroom over there…” he nodded to the right, “That one is only for fucking.”
“Wow…” I bit my lip. “Just take me where you want to, I guess.” A stir of excited nervousness lit in me as Ash tugged me forward. He made me so much more nervous than the other two did, and I guessed that it was because he seemed to like me the least of the three. The fact that he was so damn sexy in his warrior gear didn’t help to settle my anxiety at all.
To my surprise, Ash didn’t take me to any of my rooms. He took me to his own.
CHAPTER TWENTY
KORI
Ash’s room was both stark and beautiful. He had a full wall of windows, and the other three walls were metallic and bare. The only ostentatious show of wealth he had was in the books that sat in a bookshelf that spanned the length of the space. The room smelled like books along with a clean soapy scent. I ran my fingers over the spines, seeing mystery and thriller books from before the dome. “Fiction books?” I asked. “Are these from Seattle?”
“King Razor had them locked in a vault,” Ash said as he came to stand just behind me. When I leaned back against him, his arms wrapped around my shoulders and waist in an unexpectedly tender embrace. “When the city settles again and we have things like libraries, I’ll need to give them up, but for now, I’m enjoying them here.”
“Don’t mention this collection if you ever talk to my brother. He’d break in here and refuse to leave for a week,” I said.
Ash’s face nuzzled into the side of my neck, again, shocking me with the tender gesture. “Did you like my friends?” he asked, his breath warming my skin.
Ruin: A Reverse Harem Dark Fantasy Vampire Romance (Fire & Blood Book 1) Page 14